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DOOSAN Curator Workshop

Artist IncubatingDOOSAN Curator Workshop

2024 Field Trip

Oct.18.2024

2024.10.18.—20.

- Yurmyurng Kim, Jinju Kim, Jaemin Shin, Jinyoung You, Hyejung Jang, Binna Choi

- Visiting Gyeongnam region Biennale, exhibitions and Geoje Insland, Hansan Island

 

The field trip consisted of visiting the Changwon Sculpture Biennale and Busan Biennale as well as inter-participant conversations. I have always been interested in the biennale format, and this was an opportunity to examine how the two biennales implemented their exhibitions. While holding discussions with other participants, I found that, among the many roles of biennales, I considered their contribution to the region and local citizens a particularly important premise, and these are some thoughts tied to this realization: Among the works presented at the Changwon Sculpture Biennale under the title silent apple, I was most impressed by artist Donghwan Kam’s Between Paper and Rock. The zine Paper and Sea and Message in a Bottle produced in collaboration with local residents candidly—without any conscious effort to display—shows the memories shared between individuals and the city. The Busan Biennale program titled Practice in the Dark discussed how to form a community while remaining outside of it based on anthropologist David Graeber’s concept of “pirate enlightenment” and the Buddhist concept of enlightenment. As I have always largely identified with Graeber’s ideas, I was drawn to the curation itself. The trip allowed me to think about how to evaluate an exhibition as well as the difference between the experience of a well-structured exhibition and one providing profound aesthetic experiences. It also provided an opportunity for participants to learn of one another’s values and perspectives, which would aid in the curating of the exhibition at the end of DCW 2024.


- Yurmyurng Kim

 

From the moment we drafted the itinerary to the time the trip concluded, the field trip reflections on what lies within the communal boundary. The trip, during which Seoul-based six curators traveled to distant regions of Gyeongsangnam-do—Changwon, Busan, Geoje, and Hansando Island—allowed these participants in the same profession to become more aware of each other’s individuality and perspectives (than when we were in Seoul). We each saw something different in an identical place and setting, used different modes of approach, and remembered things differently. It occurred to me that curators are gatherers of dots: they mark a dot for everything they observe, the sum of which shapes their identity and ultimately culminates in exhibitions. This realization led me to see our job as a social necessity (though it is easily overlooked at times). In addition to instinctively sensing what this job means to each curator, I gained a renewed recognition of the role of biennales. After all, the two biennales held in Changwon and Busan were what ultimately had us travel around as a group for three days. Viewing the shows, we had discussions that felt like disputes at times, exchanged heartfelt remarks that sounded almost like jokes, and shared hopes that resembled regrets. Is there a reliable role for us to play in these large-scale exhibitions held outside the Seoul metropolitan area once every so many years? Beyond a simple event where works of art are manifested, a biennale is perhaps a compressed record of our complex era, through which we can diagnose today’s art and society based on the countless audio-visual stimuli presented before our eyes. After touring the biennales, we passed through Geoje to reach Hansando Island, a small island in Tongyeong, which was not only memorable for me on a personal level as it had been so long since I last visited the island where I spent my childhood but also unfamiliar as a curator visiting with fellow curators and teachers. With other curators by my side, I wondered what stories the small island and the wide-open sea could convey as part of an exhibition. Could the waves, the breakwater, the darting fish, the shut-down elementary school, my father’s old rooftop deck, the LED light illuminating the yard, and the power sockets covered with plastic possibly be saying something in the most unforced way? I think I might have heard the harmony of the age-old cocreations of nature and the villagers—creations that were never intended but, at the same time, never unintended. The trip had someone so used to the city like me indulging in such a sentimental imagination. I hope that this experience will naturally permeate my next exhibition just as unforcedly as the nature of the island.

- Jinju Kim

 

 

Visiting the Changwon Sculpture Biennale and Busan Biennale, participants of the field trip took the time to discuss the roles and functions of biennales and modes of their curation and ruminate on the question of preserving locality while dealing with transnational contemporary discourse. The Changwon Sculpture Biennale offered access to records of its previous iterations in the archives of ChangwonCity Masan MoonShin Art Museum, and whereas its previous iterations viewed sculpture from a traditional perspective as relatively large and monumental works, the latest iteration featured horizontal and immaterial forms of sculpture as well as works by contemporary women artists including Martha Rosler to expand on the meaning of horizontal sculpture and explore the topics of women, labor, and community. The publication of a local zine mook inspired by the fact that the etymology of sculpture lies in “writing” also maximized the potential of sculpture as a trans-traditional medium. Perhaps because I’m keen on contemporary Japanese artists, I was personally most impressed by Daisuke Kuroda’s video works, which referenced the life of Japanese sculptors in the modern era. His work in which authoritative Japanese modern sculptors appear as adorable animal characters seemed to visualize the helplessness, vulnerability, and personal desires underlying authority. It clearly demonstrated the artist’s intention by dismantling the verticality of traditionally established authority and laying it down horizontally. Meanwhile, the Busan Biennale proposed a vision of a multicultural and inclusive society, centering on the two axes of “pirate enlightenment” and Buddhism. I was impressed by how it refused to group the aesthetic practices evident in individual works using broad and comprehensive keywords and instead chose to highlight their individuality. Particularly impressive was how it maintained a keen perspective on both regional and national topics through the works of Korean artists, including local artists in Busan, all while placing them in a transnational context and next to works from other regions and countries that create individual movements toward topics concerning their own sociopolitical environments. The flexible approach to curation stood out in how, rather than tying individual works into a comprehensive theme, it let the works dissolve the tie themselves to independently interact and reinforce the theme in a way respectful of the uniqueness of each practice.

- Jaemin Shin


 

 

 

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